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Vancouver scores an A for adaptability in survey

'Especially vulnerable' to rising sea level, but city second in global ranking of urban resilience, behind Toronto

The Vancouver skyline seen from Vancouver Harbour with tankers in view.

Photograph by: Jenelle Schneider
, SUN

Vancouver can bounce back from adverse events better than almost any other city on the planet.

That's the conclusion of a Grosvenor Group "Resilient Cities" report released today that studied the ability of 50 global cities to deal with issues such as climate change and population growth.

Toronto was ranked as the world's most resilient city - followed by Vancouver, Calgary, Chicago and Pittsburgh. The five least resilient cities were Dhaka, Jakarta, Cairo, Manila and Mumbai.

"Cities are like society and people," Grosvenor Group research director Richard Barkham said in an interview.

"Some of them have a better ability to adapt and plan and organize themselves as a community."

The report said Canadian cities fared well because they are generally well governed, well planned and have good access to resources, including water and energy.

An overall resiliency ranking was set after determining the cities' vulnerability to negative events and their ability to adapt to change and cope with adverse issues.

Vancouver received top marks in every vulnerability category except climate vulnerability, as its low-lying coastal location makes it "especially vulnerable" to the sea level rising by an estimated one metre over the next century.

Barkham noted that many cities are vulnerable to rising sea levels.

"My impression is that Vancouver is doing more than most to address the issue of potential sea level rise, in terms of planning and thinking about how to defend itself against that sea level rise," he said.

Barkham said Vancouver is clearly vulnerable to future earthquakes but feels the city is mitigating that threat through its retrofitting programs.

"New buildings are much more resilient to earthquakes and from my outside perspective, it seems to be very aware of the need to retrofit those buildings which are still vulnerable," he said.

Vancouver scored well in its governance, planning systems, funding structures and access to financial services.

"There's no perfect city but when you look at the whole, Vancouver has done a lot to create a very livable, nonsprawling urban form with good access to public transport," Barkham said. "It has invested reasonably well in its infrastructure. There are housing affordability issues but relatively speaking, it's a relatively equal society."

The report said U.S. cities don't score particularly well in vulnerability categories because inequality in some cities leads to social tension, utilities lack investment and urban sprawl leads to the overconsumption of land.

But many U.S. cities had strong adaptive capacities and earned top marks for resources, public accountability of elected officials and technology.

"This suggests that U.S. cities will continue to see a pattern of effective public intervention, but only after a major shock has occurred," the report said.

Barkham stressed cities are more likely to be resilient if they exist within government systems that encourage disclosure and public scrutiny, but there are exceptions.

"There can be advantages to the kind of commandand-control economies you sometimes see in South Asia - in their ability to mobilize resources quickly," he said. "You can sometimes get a democratic paralysis coming in, with almost too much input that can slow up decisions.

"But our view is that in the long run, public scrutiny is key to improving infrastructure, defending against future potential threats, and improving land use."

The least resilient cities in the Grosvenor report are generally located in emerging markets and have the fastestgrowing populations of the 50 cities studied. The report said strong population growth benefits production and culture in the long term but the associated growth pressures can challenge improved adaptive capacity in the short term.

Grosvenor said the report - three years in the making - isn't definitive or "academically rigorous" but the extensive research involved the analysis of more than 100 separate, independently verified data sets that covered all aspects of vulnerability and adaptive capacity.

The U.K.-based property giant said it did the research to gain a better understanding of the long-term risks of investing in global real estate, as it wants to move beyond classic risk assessments such as projected vacancy rates and forecast rental growth.

"These have relatively little meaning in the long term and are particularly unhelpful in a world where the basic patterns of the last millennium are shifting," the report said. "... We hope that our work contributes to the development of policies - supranational, national and local - that make places more resilient, particularly those at the bottom of the hierarchy."

Barkham stressed that even cities near the top of the resiliency ranking have "weak spots."

New York is vulnerable to storms, London has a housing affordability problem and Vancouver will be exposed to rising sea levels.

"If cities don't address those issues, they'll drop down the ranking," Barkham said. "Although we give 100 as our top score (to Toronto, compared with 98 for Vancouver), it doesn't mean Vancouver or Canadian cities have arrived. There is more to do."

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